2006 / August 15th/ How much does Rails cost?
Today, I ran across something interesting in my Bloglines: Recent Rails job postings from the Job Board. No big deal, right? Well, to me it was.
Any regular reader of my site knows my love-hate relationship with 37 Signals. I may not agree with a lot of their ideas as of late, but I’ve learned to just stay out of their commercialized view, and I’m fine. I’ve unsubscribed from their spam product information mailing lists and unsubscribed from Signal vs. Noise. I’m still a paying customer of Backpack and I use Basecamp & Writeboard often. I don’t hate the company, I just get annoyed with their constant self-promotion and advertisements. It’s a personal choice; I don’t expect everyone to agree with me.
However, I did not expect to be bombarded by their cash-mongering on the open-source Ruby on Rails weblog.
My view of the Job postings
A lot of people might say: But they’re honestly adding value to the Rails community by posting job offers. Yes. They are. However, they’re promoting a paid service that has less connections than other free alternatives that have been around longer. This last sentence is what really ticked me off:
If you’re looking for Rails programmers, you can post a listing at the 37signals Job Board. The price is $250 for 30 days of air time.
That’s straight out of a commercial right there. The point is: any other competing company with a job board (i.e. TechCrunch) would be willing to pay thousands of dollars for advertisements like this. The 37s job board will no doubt receive immediate and significant increase in postings now that their reach includes the official Ruby on Rails website & weblog. 37signals decided that the Rails community needed to start paying up for their volunteered time.
My view on open source
I think that open source should be open source. No strings attached, no payment required. Just free. It’s the reason I release all of my projects are released under the MIT license, because it’s one of the truly free licenses.
Whenever I help out with open source in any way, or release anything open source, I immediately count that time as lost. I do not ever expect monetary rewards for said work. I just help out.
That does not mean I think people need work for free. I believe it’s perfectly fitting that people receive rewards for work that people willingly give them. For example, 37signals has profited from their applications, workshops, and books in combination with the immense success of Rails. It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation as Rails wouldn’t have become as popular without them, and they wouldn’t have become as popular without Rails; the point remains that they have made large sums of money because of their advocation and dedication to Rails. I feel that this money is completely deserved. If people decide to buy a book of theirs because they use and enjoy Rails: that’s great.
If you volunteered your afternoon…
Let’s look at this from another point of view: It’s a Saturday and you decide that you’d like to help out a bit. You walk down to the local homeless shelter and help out cleaning laundry for your afternoon. Would you walk home, expecting that eventually the homeless community should pay you back some how? Do you think it’s their duty to come and do yard work for you?
No. Because you volunteered your time.
How much does Rails cost?
I am by no means diminishing the immense amount of time and effort that 37signals has put into Rails. I applaud them for this effort, and they should receive all the benefits that people willingly give to them. However, there is clearly some amount of money that 37 Signals believes the Rails community still owes them for their time. Here’s a quote from David:
Helping the 37signals Job Board in the process of doing that is extra sugar on top. Considering the untold hours of open source development the company has donated to the Rails project.
To me, this sounds like someone who thinks they deserve something. Kind of like the friend who happens to forget his wallet because last time he bought everyone a round.
So here’s my question, David: How much will it cost to buy Ruby on Rails from 37signals?
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August 15th | #
The job board is obnoxious, I agree. I unsubscribed from svn for a while (when the job board really started taking over) and then re-subscribed recently. There’s just some great links that come through there that I would have otherwise missed. I don’t mind sifting through the fluff and finding a nugget from time-to-time.
Apparently however, reposting “cool” jobs is totally in right now (another site I had to unsubscribe from). Go figure.
I wasn’t quite following you on the volunteer vs. “you owe me thing” until that last quote from DHH. I wonder if that’s really how they feel or maybe it is an opinion that developed out of the need to rationalize the non-stop self-promotion.
Strictly business, it makes perfect sense that they would advertsise their products/services/goods in their products/services/goods. It’s free advertising for them and it’s practically the only advertising they need to do. Their ever growing community takes care of the remainder of the advertising model.
August 16th | #
The job listings annoyed me on Signal Vs. Noise too but I understood it was their blog and they could do what they liked with it. Advertising the job board on the Rails blog crosses the line.
August 16th | #
[...] Kyle Neath from Warpspire wrote an interesting post yesterday entitled “How much does Rails cost?” discussing the way Rails is getting commercialized by 37signals lately specifically after the latest post David published on Ruby on Rails Blog on Recent Rails job postings from the 37signals Job Board, I don’t want to defend anybody here instead I have a point of view that I would like to share: [...]
August 16th | #
I can certainly understand your vexation at 37signals’ commercialization of an open-source project like Rails.
However, in my mind there is a very big difference between volunteering (like at the homeless shelter, per your example) and contributing to an open-source project. Volunteering is something that you do purely out of the goodness of your heart, to feel good about yourself, to rebuild your faith in humanity, or for a desire to help people.
When I contribute to an open-source project (admittedly, on only a few occasions), it is a purely selfish act. It’s either an outgrowth of some internal project that might be augmented by (and of use to) the open-source community, or it will in some way contribute to the bottom line.
The point is that I don’t believe that “open-source” equals “free of charge or obligation”. Most people who use open-source software use it in some way to make money. Very few, I would imagine, do it for purely altruistic reasons. For me, I use open-source software like Rails to write web apps that make money. If it weren’t for Rails, I could not do what I’m doing, so in order to keep the cycle going, I contribute as much as I can. But I’m in business to make money, not for the good of humanity. The special trick is to do good AND to do well. Business looks after money, conscience looks after the community, and the person looks after the person.
The purpose of business is to create a customer (Drucker), so props to 37signals for creating a customer where there formerly was no market, and for making money using things that were formerly lying around unused. That’s my goal too.
August 16th | #
Is any contributor to RoR allowed to spam the RoR mailing list with advertising? This action from 37s seems to say, “yes.”
August 16th | #
I don’t get it. What’s the big deal? It’s not ‘costing’ you anything to ignore the job ads, and these ads certainly provide more value to the community than less. That 37signals is using their control to promote some of their products is natural and healthy.
If they were tricking you into clicking on job ads or other 37signals ads before you could even download Rails, you might have a point, but otherwise it just seems like complaining about something that’s easily avoidable.
August 16th | #
Peter,
My point was not to point out how obnoxious these job listings were (as, quite honestly, they infuriate me and have made me unsubscribe from several blogs as of late). I realize for some people it may be easy to ignore, for me, it’s not. I don’t really have rationale for this, but I guess just take my word for it — it goes along the same reasons that I don’t shop at Walmart, I don’t watch TV, and I don’t visit websites that have popups.
My bigger problem with it is the fact that 37signals feels that Rails community owes them money for Rails. If there is this constant repayment hanging over the head of the framework, it devalues the community upon which Rails was built. It changes developers from contributors, to moochers who haven’t paid their dues.
August 16th | #
First, Rails is not for sale. Second, how do you figure I owe you anything? Your definition of open source is your own, but its not shared by me. And trying to impose that upon me seems like the ultimate form of entitlement. But hey, your idiosyncrasy is your own. Unsubscribe from the Rails feed if that’s what needed to serve it, abandon your use of Rails if needs be.
August 16th | #
David,
I’m curious as to how you think I’m imposing my view onto you. I’m merely expressing my opinion (as, I agree, it is my definition, not everyones). The same way that Rails is opinionated software, I am an opinionated user.
But enforcing an ultimatum on me to live with your view or quit using Rails… well, I suppose that’s all that needs to be said.
August 16th | #
While I’m not getting into RoR “spam” on the developers mailing list? (I know nothing of this so am not in a position to comment).
What I will say is that by requiring payment for adverts, you are weeding out the real jobs from those that are not. Forcing people to pay to advertise for a job (globally I might add) makes them look at what they are looking for and actually adds to the value of the board. Just an idea on that front.
August 17th | #
Hmmm! How do you feel about the curnchboard?
http://www.crunchboard.com/
August 23rd | #
The thing that makes Rails so beautiful is that it takes a stance.
It recognises the truth that EVERY assertion in life cannot be objective, therefore as we’re taking a subjective role by making an assertion (and writing software and designing something IS making an assertion), Rails dares to be so bold as to be aware of its choices.
Choosing not to choose is still a choice! And all of the frameworks and coding methodologies that have gone before have attempted to do this. That choice doesn’t help day to day, because day to day, we still have to make choices. Rails makes those choices easier FOR us, by making some general assumptions, and by doing that, we’re free to see where we stand on the issue.
If Rails hadn’t made choices for us, we woudn’t be able to see where we stand on such issues, and the beauty of Rails is that after IT having made those default choices, if we want to abandon the “ease of use” and go with the “cusomization” route, then we’re free to go against the choices Rails has made for us, in part or in full.
In the same way, as the framework is opinionated, so is its director - DHH. You can bet that every single thing that comes from him will have a stance, and the stance will be made in full consciousness that it IS a stance.
Yes, there is advertising for the job board on the rails site. The rails site is an ad for rails - whether you like it, or whether you don’t. Regardless of whether there is a “donate with paypal” button, or something more useful like the job board, it’s still a call to support those who work day to day on the administration, advertising, marketing and management of the framework. But rather than a “give us money” call, it’s a call with a purpose and a use.
September 18th | #
Yeah, somehow DHH is allowed to be full of opinions and this is considered a wondeful thing, but when he comes into contact with any non-cheerleader who disagrees with him even slightly he flips a bit. Not sure how you rationalize that one.
September 22nd | #
Who cares. It’s their site so they can do what they want with it. Is two lines of text really so disrupting that you need to write an entire article about it? Give me a break.
September 27th | #
Rails is released under the “MIT” license, so it is perfectly “forkable” except that no self respecting developer wants to do that.
Hey DHH, stop whining like a little bitch when someone criticizes your stupid “opinions”. Wake up and smell the roses. There is a lot of unfinished crappy web2.0 shitty apps out there that no-one is looking at.
You won’t hear 37 signals sgnalling the death of Kiko or EhList or Kweschun… there is plenty of other rails crapsites sitting there waiting for the hits..
Unfortunately, NO ONE is clicking! And if you talk to the fanboys, they sound like idiotic cult members. All of a sudden having an opinion, ANY MORONIC OPINION, is cool. “A database is like a hash” What the FKing FCK???? ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME?
No wonder you see douchebags getting a 10 thousand item list with a select * from the activerecord so they can do a Userlist.size !!!! YOU EVER HEARD OF “SELECT COUNT(*)” you numbnuts? Oh wait .. a database is just a hash like DHH says..
Stopping USING opensource when it suits your corporate purposes to get the free beta testing you craven corpo-whores! And stop treating the community like shit.
Give me a break!
September 12th | #
Ruby is for lazy programmers anyway. Well, other then the main Rails coders, most are just people that can’t code and turn to ruby since the framework takes about 90% of the work out. And in doing so every Rails site looks the same.. AKA web 2.0.
There should be a law on 37 signals site… Do not attempt to sell yourself as a RoR developer until you can develop a whole site with classes, methods, functions, and SQL statements of your own.
PHP is still free… 100%… just look at PHP’s site. only thing advertised there is PHP conferences.
have fun with this… i am going back to my non drama PHP!
January 12th | #
Vincenzo, please… “Ruby is for lazy programmers anyway. ” What kind of statement is this? Why do you have to insult people who are better in using time than you. If I can find something already done, and modify it in a few hours, does that mean that I’m lazy?